1. Field
A refrigerator and a method for controlling a refrigerator are disclosed herein.
2. Background
Refrigerators include a plurality of storages to store food or other items in a frozen state or a refrigerated state. The plurality of storages have an open side to allow access to the food stored in the storages. The storages may include a freezer compartment to store food in the frozen state, and a refrigerator compartment to store food in the refrigerated state.
A refrigerating system through which refrigerant circulates may be driven in such a refrigerator. The refrigerating system may include a compressor, a condenser, an expansion device, and an evaporator. The evaporator may include a first evaporator disposed at a side of a refrigerator compartment, and a second evaporator disposed at a side of a freezer compartment.
Cold air stored in the refrigerator compartment may be cooled by the first evaporator, and then, may be supplied again to the refrigerator compartment. Cold air stored in the freezer compartment may be cooled by the second evaporator, and then, may be supplied again to the freezer compartment. The refrigerant may be selectively supplied to the first or second evaporator and be evaporated.
As such, typical refrigerators are configured such that a plurality of storages are independently cooled by separate evaporators, and refrigerant is supplied to any one of the evaporators to cool one of the storages and stop cooling of the other storages. Thus, simultaneous cooling of the storages is not accomplished, and one of the storages and the others are selectively or alternately cooled.
In this case, the storage which is cooled is maintained within an appropriate range of temperature, but temperatures of the storages which are not cooled increase outside of a normal or appropriate range. In addition, when cooling of one of the storages is needed, it may be sensed that the temperatures of the other storages are not within the normal or appropriate range. In this case, the other storages cannot be instantly cooled.
As a result, a structure for independently cooling storages cannot supply cold air to a suitable place at a suitable time, thus decreasing operation efficiency of a refrigerator.